[Discussion]Tense Frontiers & Open Borders

Mansen

Enthusiast

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 5:56:19 PM

Tiggy - the game has a "time" victory that triggers after that many turns. You can turn it off on the new game screen (advanced?) for future games.

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 9:37:09 PM

Palleon wrote:
I think a good way to deal with the "tense borders" would be to simply have it be the opposite end of "long periods of peace". So when you first meet someone, or just after finishing a war, you get the maximum tense borders modifier, but over time, that penalty goes down to 0, after which it would be replaced with the positive "long period of peace" bonus, as they get more and more confident that you're not going to come swarming into their territory.

Edit: Which is really how I think most of these bonus/malus things need to be. Instead of having constant negative modifiers that outweigh the positives, the negatives, with a few exceptions, should generally fade away towards zero, and/or be replaced by positive's that grow over time. Obviously, if you conquer someone's system, maybe that should be a permenant penalty, but stuff like expansion, tense borders, etc, should be less of an issue over time, and instead of just adding a new positive to (only slightly) balance it out, just have the positives take its place, so you can generate real long-term relationships without constant bribes.

May be not maxed out right away...what about Tense Frontiers having a starting bonus/debuff based on the race. So say a warlike race will start you with the debuff. While a race like the Sophons would be neutral to start. You could also help or hinder this seesaw effect by accounting for fleets on shard node lines. So say you have a a couple heavily armed fleets sitting at the border...that would make any one nervous. But say you keep your fleets a system or two back as a way to respond to threats...then they would be more relaxed.

Palleon

Newcomer

Palleon

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 9:17:25 PM

I think a good way to deal with the "tense borders" would be to simply have it be the opposite end of "long periods of peace". So when you first meet someone, or just after finishing a war, you get the maximum tense borders modifier, but over time, that penalty goes down to 0, after which it would be replaced with the positive "long period of peace" bonus, as they get more and more confident that you're not going to come swarming into their territory.

Edit: Which is really how I think most of these bonus/malus things need to be. Instead of having constant negative modifiers that outweigh the positives, the negatives, with a few exceptions, should generally fade away towards zero, and/or be replaced by positive's that grow over time. Obviously, if you conquer someone's system, maybe that should be a permenant penalty, but stuff like expansion, tense borders, etc, should be less of an issue over time, and instead of just adding a new positive to (only slightly) balance it out, just have the positives take its place, so you can generate real long-term relationships without constant bribes.

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 8:58:45 PM

Any way back to the topic. I believe the easiest way to mitigate some of these out of control effects is a combination of structures, technologies, and alterations. Structure wise I would be open to building something like a Embassy in my capitol system, The effect of which would be to open more dialog options in the diplomacy window. Some of the options could be treaties like say: Mutual Boarder Patrols, Neutral Zone Implementation, Expedited Trade Procedures. Things like that.

Tech tree wise, I do not see any reason that the "tense border" effect could not be reduced. May be by just a couple technologies that allow better IFF signatures or better communication and cooperation. Nothing to complex...just enough to bring the effect down by may be 20 - 30 pts total. As for alterations...well there are allot of alterations that can be done to fix this untenable situation. All the core tools exist, they just have to be implemented in a way that allows it.

Mansen

Enthusiast

Mansen

Enthusiast

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 7:23:13 PM

Anytime - I'm here to help (except when I troll :sweat

Tiggy

Newcomer

Tiggy

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:42:29 PM

oh well thanks for the help anyways mansen, very much appretiated ^_^

Mansen

Enthusiast

Mansen

Enthusiast

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:25:41 PM

Tiggy wrote:
thats the thing, EVERYTHING was dissabled so it shoudl have been an "endless" game ... pun possibly intended

Pretty sure there's an issue in the game right now with the victories that forces the score victory on if you turn off all of the victories. Sorry. Your best bet is picking the most unlikely victory condition you can think of.

Tiggy

Newcomer

Tiggy

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:21:58 PM

thats the thing, EVERYTHING was dissabled so it shoudl have been an "endless" game ... pun possibly intended

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:13:05 PM

The victory check your after is "Score Victory" After 300 turns the empire with the highest score wins.

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:10:59 PM

Well this is something of an AI issue, but it is also just a penalty value issue. Fortunately the game is in Beta and so this should get sorted out. Just like the crazy AI behavior of expanding WAY to fast and the expansion penalty then crushes the AI. Amusing to watch that one really, especially with the Sowers.

Tiggy

Newcomer

Tiggy

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 6:09:41 PM

mansen - yea i looked in the normal and advanced new game screen options but it isnt showing up there only got, diplomacy,score,supremacy,research,expansion and economic. only other tick box there is random galaxy seed generation, unless im on an older/newer version, but i got it off steam, so im not sure, thanks anyways though.

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 11, 2012, 6:28:16 PM

So I finally got into a game where things were going well. Good planets, a friendly neighbor, some other people to shoot. And I was working on my Diplomacy when my neighbor started to loose interest in me. Looking at the points I noted that the Sophons had -80 because of sharing a star link.

This got me wondering...I have a piece treaty with this group. I have an open borders treaty with this group. Why are relations so tense because we are close to one another? It strikes me as a little odd that you have these treaties and they do nothing to dissuade the fears concerning a single star link.

My thoughts on it would be that Open Borders should, may be with the aid of a diplomatic technology, reduce the "Tense Frontiers" diplomatic debuff by some. May be once you got to ally it can be reduced even more because you just best of friends and such. Any thoughts on this?

Tiggy

Newcomer

Tiggy

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 5:15:29 PM

i have noticed this alot myself, i started a game as UE and have only just today had it abruptly end at turn 300 ( i honestly did not know there was a turn cap and got no option to contune playing) anyways i got quite friendly with the Horatio early on and things were doing rather well untill i started getting a good foothold where the tense boarders and expansion negitive ratings started getting rediculusly high, even decided to go way over the bonus i got for being peacefull neighbors tot hem for such a long time to the point were they ditched me and decced me, this seems to be a huge problem late game, this negitice effect from boarder tension needs to be removed after declareing peace since you should have gotten past such petty things and should start getting more positive modifiers for longer periods of peace and open boarders should be the way foward towards an alliance but i cant seem to get a positive relations modifier to even start getting there.

Mansen

Enthusiast

Mansen

Enthusiast

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 3:21:48 PM

Yeah it's basically that in a nutshell - as you expand your empire your early game allies just slowly become more and more pissed at you, requiring lots of tech bribes to keep them in the positive (since you'll end up having a "per turn" negative modifier of ... a lot)

Palleon

Newcomer

Palleon

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 3:03:14 PM

I think this is just part of a fundamental problem in diplomacy right now, which is that there are far more negative modifiers, which are very strong, compared to the relatively few (and weak) positive modifiers. For example, in my latest game, I was allied with the Sophons for almost 60 turns, but I had to bribe them every few turns to keep them friendly, because I had a score of 16,000, and they had a score of 900. So I had a -80 score opinion, a -60 tense borders opinion, a -105 expansion opinion, and the only positives were a +50 "long time at peace" bonus, a +30 alliance bonus, and a +5 common enemy bonus. Since the negatives always STRONGLY outweigh the positives, it doesn't really seem possible to maintain a long-term peaceful status with anyone, since any one of those negative modifiers completely washes out all the positives, and then some.

Mansen

Enthusiast

Mansen

Enthusiast

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 1:06:55 AM

Indeed - the AI needs to be willing to offer up techs if you are a much superior threat to them. Even if I have 9 fleets parked ready to invade every of his remaining systems he goes ahead and wardecs me. *sigh*

GC13

Old

I feel like I'm trying way too hard to pick a favorite faction...

GC13

Old

16 400g2g pts

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 12:52:52 AM

SyberSmoke wrote:
Well to add more agreements, I hope that the other empire would not require an arm and a leg to get them. I find it funny that a neutral empire requires a bribe just to agree to a peace treaty. It is a little silly, yet they do not offer me anything when they want piece. Especially when have 3 fleets knocking down their doors. Silly silly AI.

Yeah, not quite sane. An AI with two systems left will declare war on me not long after the ceasefire ends, despite not having a chance of taking me on. Take a system, it accepts a cease fire. Then later it declares war on me again, despite being down to its last system...

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

SyberSmoke

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jun 12, 2012, 12:38:32 AM

Well to add more agreements, I hope that the other empire would not require an arm and a leg to get them. I find it funny that a neutral empire requires a bribe just to agree to a peace treaty. It is a little silly, yet they do not offer me anything when they want piece. Especially when have 3 fleets knocking down their doors. Silly silly AI.

Mansen

Enthusiast

Mansen

Enthusiast